


Until Now

by HK44



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Fluff, Trans!Keith, two mixed children kind of bonding over the fact that they're mixed and feel weird about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 02:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13871469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HK44/pseuds/HK44
Summary: His whole life he’d felt weird. Like a strange outsider compared to all the others. Dad said he looked like his mother. His grandmother always said he looked like his grandfather. And he could see it. Sometimes. In person before he died and then in the photos.He never saw his mom.





	Until Now

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't watched Season 5 yet so this probably isn't compliant but I literally don't care because indulgence and self-projecting???

_You’re not a Galra, Keith_.  _You don’t even look like one. You’re a human! That’s what you look like, that’s what you know! That’s what you are._

His whole life he’d felt weird. Like a strange outsider compared to all the others. Dad said he looked like his mother. His grandmother always said he looked like his grandfather. And he could see it. Sometimes. In person before he died and then in the photos.

He never saw his mom.

Other kids thought he was adopted. They didn’t like it when he started calling himself Keith. They didn’t like him. He was weird.

Shiro changed things. Not everything. But he made things better. Easier.

Still that barrier was always there. He used to wonder if other children wondered it. Families that had vanished when they were too young to recall them. Missing photographs of people no one would describe.

Sometimes he accepted it. He wasn’t like the rest of them. He was adopted. It was the only explanation he could stomach in the dark dread of night, when those thoughts crept up on him like a snake. Other times he figured it didn’t matter. He didn’t like having his photo taken, maybe his mom didn’t too.

Maybe it was a family thing.

Either way, he never felt real. And then he found the knife.

And he remembered a soft hand on his shoulders and a soft voice in the air and laughter and hot chocolate and the knife in front of him, gripped with tiny tiny fingers as someone told him the story of the universe.

He couldn’t remember how it went.

But he remembered the feeling of being loved.

Maybe that was why he never threw it out, never got rid of it, even if it carried the ugly reminder of being left behind.

And now he had a reason to the otherworldly feelings that bottled up inside him. He had a path, clear and straight ahead. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was gone. But she was a fighter, like his father, like him.

Wasn’t he allowed to feel connected to them, to their history?

Even if he didn’t know.

Even if he didn’t grow up into it.

He was a Galra. He was a human. He was American. He was Korean. Where was the split. Why wasn’t he allowed to be happy with what he had, when he had spent  _years_  knowing  _nothing_.

Of wanting to know, of being desperate for just a drop of the secrets, of wanting to stop feeling  _different._

He held the knife up, watched it glint in the light. This was a legacy. It  _belonged_  to him. It worked for him.

It was his.

It was hers.

They were connected. She was his mother, even if he wasn’t purple. Even if he was  _small_. Even if hair everywhere but his head stayed thin and barely noticeable. Why did that have to stop him from being a part of them?

It didn’t stop him from being being his father’s son.

He closed his eyes and titled his head back. The stars trickled down at him. He remembered being young and in love with the way they twinkled. The way they looked, glimmering down at him.

He always wanted to touch one.

His dad told him he was starbound, like his mom.

He supposed in a way his dad was right.

He dropped the knife back into his sheath and laid it against his lap, gripping the handle tightly. Footsteps pattered down the hallway. He glanced up. Was it Lance coming to apologize?

He snorted to himself. Unlikely.

Probably Kolivan coming to tell him it was time to go. Or force him to stay with the others. Who knew?

The other members of the Blade thought him to be decent but he could tell just by the way they commented on his height, his features, they didn’t know if they should count him or not.

Hell, he didn’t know if he should either. Maybe that’s why it hurt so much when Lance yelled that at him, when the other didn’t fight back for him.

He shifted until he could push up into a proper stand and glanced at the person coming down the hallway. Lotor paused a few steps away.

And Keith wondered what he thought of himself.

“Your associates are still arguing,” Lotor said. He looked Keith over but didn’t say much else.

Keith shrugged. “They’ll find me when they decide where I need to be.”

Lotor arched a brow, crossing his arms over his chest. “And where do  _you_  want to be?”

Where did Keith want to be? With the people who could tell him the things he wanted to know. With the people who made him feel familiar. He liked the close range missions the Blade went on.

He missed Red but he needed more. They both knew that. He liked to hit and cut close. Liked to feel himself moving, not being rooted to a chair.

He needed the things she couldn’t offer him. No matter how much it hurt to part from her, he couldn’t stomach being stationary for long. Though he did love flying.

It just wasn’t enough for him.

There was more good he could do as a member of the Blade anyway than as a paladin of Voltron.

“I’ll go wherever needs me most,” he relented at last.

Lotor didn’t seem particularly impressed with his answer. He didn’t care. He didn’t live his life for other people.

Even still, Lotor didn’t leave. Just watched him as Keith stared out of the castle windows and tried to push down his fight response. His fingers twitched around the handle of his knife.

But Lotor was effectively trapped to the castle. They didn’t know what to think of him, offering himself up as a friend after having spent too much time as a foe. After a few days of deliberation and imprisonment, Pidge engineered cuffs she’d attached to his ankles and wrists. They were like shock collars, except rather than give a sharp sting, they forced him out of commission. He couldn’t leave.

If he tried anything to anyone, there was no escape.

He’d be dead in seconds.

So far so good but Keith never trusted a stranger fully. Especially not one who’d proven a threat to the people he cared about.

“So you’re a half-breed?” Lotor asked.

Keith started and glanced back him, bristling. That term. There was somthing ugly in its words. “Don’t call me that,” he snapped

Lotor blinked, surprised. Then smiled low and stretched. “Yes, I never cared for it either.” He dropped his arms to his side. “But being something like me is quite rare. Taboo even.” He cleared his throat and glanced off to the side, fidgeting where he stood. “Is it like that on Earth?”

Keith paused.

Was.

Was he asking Keith if he  _was normal?_

Keith swallowed. “It’s not uncommon,” he said after a few seconds of thought. “My dad is mixed. But there are some people who don’t approve.” He bit his lip. “Or they think you need to pick a side.”

Lotor sucked his teeth, frowning. He clenched his fists at his side but said nothing, brows furrowed. Keith hated the way he still looked ridiculously elegant.

He shifted so he could see Lotor fully, just look at him. “What do you think of yourself?” Lotor eyed him warily. Keith gripped the knife tighter. “To me, I’m a human. But I’m also a Galra. I feel right when I’m with the Blade. When I’m surrounded by them. Even if I didn’t know the existed until now, I feel like I was supposed to be here.” He watched Lotor carefully. “What about you?”

Lotor took a deep breath and scowled. “I’m a Galra.” Then he relaxed, his fists sliding out in thin fingers and exposed palms. “Allura. Coran. They.” He paused, staring at the floor. Then his eyes scanted up at Keith’s. “They make me feel like I’ve found the thing I’ve been missing.”

Keith relaxed. “Yeah.”

“I’ve known forever that I was also Altean,” Lotor continued. He glanced out the window, watching the stars glitter back at them, “But I never had anything to connect me to it.”

“Until now.”

He glanced back at Keith and nodded quietly. “Until now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yo, I've mentioned this before but I'm a mixed baby so I like the fact that Keith and Lotor are also mixed babies and I'm offended they haven't discussed that both of them are mixed. Also! Please keep in mind (because I saw so much of this when the generals were shown for the first time) half-breed is not a nice term. It was literally used as an insult in the show and it's a cruel term to called mixed children anyway. 
> 
> Additional note, I told my friend Ollie that Texas Kogane was too white-looking for my tastes to have Kogane as a last name so I decided that he was mixed and white passing because, hey, I'm mixed and white-passing. It works out.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed this! I really missed writing Voltron, even if the fandom has made me disinterested in the show at large.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://happyk44.tumblr.com/post/171529984867/note-i-still-havent-seen-season-5-so-this-is-not) || [Insta](https://www.instagram.com/hk44_art/)


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